I’d long wondered if I wanted a Lens Baby. I went back and forth on it for so long that I finally decided to just buy one and find out. About 30 seconds after I placed the order the realization hit: I could probably rent or borrow one from my local camera shop — oh well.

One of the things that really bugged me about the Lens Baby is that everyone takes some typical portrait-y shot of their wife or kids with it right out the gate. Here’s mine.

Yeah. Thats the Lens Baby. I got the 3G model with the screw-sketeton that acts more like a roll cage than any functional focusing tool. That popular Lens Baby soft focus looks SO white-washed for commercial marketing. Its weird, it can be reallypleasing if done right and trash if done wrong. It is, however, a ton of fun to play with. I’d put it up there with the Nikon 10.5mm equisolid Fish-Eye.

The way the lens baby works is that you shift it from flexible to rigid (in what ever shape its in at that moment) at the press of a button. As you bend and twist the flexible tube Lens Baby’s center of focus and depth of field change and warp. When you touch the button that immobilizes the tube, the center of focus essentially freezes; you can slightly manipulate it with the fine tuning knobs.

It takes some getting used to and initial results were not that dramatic. This shot of my dog shows the beginnings of a lens baby effect. The soft-focus in this shot would have been far, far nicer with my Nikon AF-S 70-200 f2.8 VR- honestly there is almost nothing like that lens for beautiful bokeh. This shot is OK, nothing to call home about.

I turned as I finished with Lucy to see this guy motoring by. I wanted to see if I could grab a quick shot of action. Suddenly the strengths of the Lens Baby started to materialize. The photo of the boat looks really, really photoshopped, but it isn’t! That is how the light hit the sensor! The bokeh is nice. It doesn’t evoke much emotion but its kind of Hallmark-ish in flavor. The focused area is a bit larger than I’d have liked and the transition is just ick. Regardless, I started to get a feel for how to work the lens and where to go with it. (You can reduce the in-focus area by swapping out apertures with their magnetic aperture tool.)

Luckily for me, we had a few errands to run and I decided to bring the lens baby. Our first stop was at the Babies R Us and the second was our local market. As I was walking down the beer aisle I thought I saw art. Isn’t it strange where we get inspired? Beer. The lighting seemed OK, the colors, shapes, patterns all appeared right — I decided to make me a new desktop background…

All in all, the LensBaby 3G is a pretty cool toy. Its fun to carry as the only lens for my camera; it forces me to try and find the right shot for it. Pushes me to compose and experiment more actively. I’m happy and will certainly be keeping it - well worth the $270. I also purchased the Lens Baby 3G Case as it really needs it to survive in my camera bag.

Note I have decided to cross-post this on my unheard of photoblog Happy Exposure